>>6624188Because while it was important, the Temple was hardly critical to Jewish religious practice, and hadn't been for some time. Ever since the Maccabean revolt, you had a cold religious war between the temple priests on one hand, and the sages/ rabbis/learned people on the other, sparked over the passing of the throne to a priestly family.

And unlike in say, Christianity, to be a "Kohen", a Jewish priest, the only thing you really need is to be the legitimate son of another priest. They aren't caretakers of knowledge or rituals beyond the ones to bring up the animal sacrifices. That was a completely different body of people who held the corpus of religious lore. And because of the travel times and risks in the ancient Mediterranean, it was very difficult for a sacrifice based group which could only do its rituals at one specific location to dominate religious life outside of the area immediately around Jerusalem itself, and out in the hinterlands, it was the Pharisees and their people who were the dominant political and religious forces by the time of the big revolt.

So when the Temple was burned and the Kohanim scattered or killed, the rabbis just picked up as they were and went onward, simple as that.

Hundreds of thousands of jews already lived outside Palestine/Judea even before the revolts, they technically had the protection of the Roman Empire as long as they didn't revolt they didn't even have to sacrifice to pagan gods like everyone else did as long as they paid a specific tax.